FW: H-Environment: Caswell on Dempsey, 'Half Wild: People, Dogs, and Environmental Policy' [Review]
Harris, Craig
Possibly of interest . . .
Cheers,
Craig
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A new Review has been posted in H-Environment. Caswell on Dempsey, 'Half Wild: People, Dogs, and Environmental Policy'Dempsey, Dave.
Half Wild: People, Dogs, and Environmental Policy. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2022. Illustrations. 103 pp. $27.95 (paper), ISBN
9781611864434. Reviewed by Kurt Caswell (Texas Tech University) Printable Version: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=61235 A title is a book’s first line, or even its first idea, thrust forward into the reader’s imagination to carry with them across the pages of the reading experience. Even if you want to remove a title from your memory based on its little use or its heavy-handedness, it’s nearly impossible. Once it’s in there, you can’t get it out of there, and so you carry it alongside your evaluation of what you are reading against what you thought you would be reading. You don’t so much as judge a book by its cover as you judge a book by its title. And so, when considering the title of Dave Dempsey’s 2022 book, Half Wild: People, Dogs, and Environmental Policy, I expected to embrace a comprehensive study of how people have incorporated dogs into the ongoing project of environmental policy. Fascinating. But the book is not that. The book is a collection of personal essays—a thin volume of personal essays at just over one hundred pages—organized around the three themes laid out in the subtitle, though each one is distinct from the others. Once I got over my narrowed expectations, I rather liked the book, or at least rather liked some of the essays. In this book, Dempsey is at his best when writing in the short form, when offering the reader a tightly controlled, sharply executed story in, say, just 250-500 words. Several essays of this length appear in the book spaced at roughly regular intervals, and all of them about dogs. The book begins and ends with essays about the author’s dog, Fitz. In between are stories of dogs named Dee Dee, Pudd’n, Jones, and Dude. I suppose it’s alright to have a favorite dog story, and mine, when faced with this list, is Dude’s. Dude is a rescue dog with an outlaw spirit, Dempsey tells us, comparable to a fox and referenced as an “old rebel” (p. 66). “Was he really a dog?” Dempsey asks (p. 65). A good question, due to Dude’s surprising human-like qualities, which I found most affective, especially his habit of smiling and kissing. Though the essay is no longer than one page, it is a complete story that captures the whole of Dude’s rebellious life. And at the end of it, Dude is off into the afterlife on yet another hunt for space to roam, which is perhaps every dog’s dream. I like this essay best because I like Dude. Dempsey is the author of thirteen books of nonfiction, most of which center on environmental themes relevant to the state of Michigan and the Great Lakes region. In the 1980s, he served as the environmental policy advisor for Michigan governor James Blanchard. He is recipient of a Michigan Author Award, an award later received by such notable writers as Bonnie Jo Campbell, Jim Harrison, and Mitch Albom. And he has taught courses in environmental policy at Western Michigan University and Michigan State University. The essays in the book addressing public policy and environmental issues I found less attractive, though they are not less readable. Of note are “Landfill in the Sky” and “Politics and Fish.” Even when taking on these more detailed and nuanced subjects, Dempsey writes crisp, sometimes bursting sentences that seem to ask the reader to pause or at least leave a space for silent reflection. For example, in “Landfill in the Sky,” the entire essay moves deftly and rapidly toward its final paragraph, which is but one sentence long. Even out of context, a reader might understand the essay by this one line: “The only winner, for decades, was the Detroit incinerator” (p. 43). I have never met Dempsey, and I had not read any of his work until this book, but I came to feel close to him on the page, the sometimes project of most writers of personal essay. About two-thirds of the way through the book, the essay “Toxic Shock” comes like a storm sweeping into an otherwise happy valley, as Dempsey tells the story of his discovery and struggle with Parkinson’s disease. He wants to know how and why he got this disease and goes to work exploring a possible environmental cause for what will become the great challenge of the rest of his life. And he seems to find one, too, though it cannot be conclusive. Through his exploration, Dempsey wants us to understand what we are doing to the only planet we know on which human life is possible. He is right to tell us that the toxins we are releasing into our water, soils, and air “will persist for generations” (p. 73). Dempsey’s Half Wild is a short, personal, adventurous, and highly readable book. It is filled with stories of dogs. It includes a few good illustrations. And it might serve as the hinge that opens a door to a personal consideration of environmental policy: what happens when our ongoing degradation of the natural world is not just in our backyards but also in our bodies? It seems to me that Dempsey may not be finished with this subject, the environmental causes for Parkinson’s and other troubling diseases. I hope he is so inclined, as I would like to read the book that comes from that frightening reality and necessary truth. Citation: Kurt Caswell. Review of Dempsey, Dave.
Half Wild: People, Dogs, and Environmental Policy. H-Environment, H-Net Reviews. January, 2025. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Message from a proud sponsor of H-Net:
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